Saving Pleasant Street - Part 1

by
Bill Peters

Thursday January 10, 2008, 1:48 PM

An interview with Silas Kopf

Photo by Bill PetersHome of Silas Kopf Woodworking

Silas Kopf graduated from Princeton in '72, and then moved to Rochester, New York, a city known for the following things: Kodak, Xerox, Genny Light, Foreigner, and, apparently, renowned craftsman and oft-cited pioneer of contemporary art furniture, Wendell Castle. During Kopf's first year in Rochester, 49 days passed without a minute of sunlight. But Kopf got an apprenticeship with Castle, and took a liking to French furniture that utilized marquetry, a centuries-old art form in which varying types of wood are precisely carved and inlaid together to create a whole picture.

Currently, Kopf's woodworking shop is in one of Easthampton's more interesting buildings, the old Fire Station on Union Street. Building a single chair takes approximately a week of work. Nonetheless, he also found time to help save Northampton's Pleasant Street Theater, initiating a call for donations that brought in over $91K, which, along with $25K donated the Center for the Arts' First Night profits, has positioned the Theater to reopen on January 25th -- just in time for awards season. Kopf speculates that, come springtime, the theater may shut down for a few weeks for a second round of renovations and upgrades.

Photo from silaskopf.com

Our interview on how all this happened is below. For more information, also check out Kelsey Flynn's podcast interview with Kopf. Updates, along with a really interesting story about how Kopf got to play tennis with Andre Agassi and John McEnroe, to come.

Can you describe your collaboration, or your initial conversations with Bruce and Rita Bleiman in soliciting a non-profit to restore Pleasant Street Theater?

Let me back up a little bit from that - we had both independently been reading in the reports that [the Theater] was going to close down, starting back [this summer]. And Bob Lawton, in the paper, made it clear that he couldn't make any money at it. So it seemed like: 'Well, that's no way to advertise a sale,' for one thing, but that's neither here nor there.

But I just personally felt like it would've been sad to see it go, because it was actually the first thing that attracted my wife and I to Northampton. We came into town, and here's this little theatre, before we had even thought of moving here. We were just in town to have a meal, and said, "Let's go see a movie." And I thought that was great, and thought it was part of the fabric of the arts community, from my standpoint. In the time that I've lived here, the Calvin has stopped showing movies, the Academy has stopped showing movies, and we don't have anything left. I'm not very fond of the malls, personally...as one news story followed the other, at some point, the number was bandied about that if somebody could come up with $40,000, then that would show enough security to run it for another year.

So Bruce and I had the conversation...maybe we can see if we can find people to raise that and at least keep the thing alive and on life support until somebody can step in and save it. Because the fear was that if it closed down and Joe Blumenthal had to rent it out to a clothing boutique, or something like that, you'd never get it back. It would be way too expensive to start from scratch and get something like that going. So we put out some feelers - Bruce has better contacts than I - and his wife Rita is a former city counselor so she had a fairly big email list. So we decided to compose this letter that we were initially going to put out. And it was all awkward because of the Thanksgiving holiday and Christmas -- when do we time this thing so that people are going to read it - and ask people, "Would you be willing to pledge something to save the theater," just to see if we could get to $50,000.

And at the same time, Bruce is a member of the Amherst Cinema, and thought we should - or he should talk to them. So Bruce approached Carol Johnson, and said, 'You've got your own fundraising in Amherst but what if we, on this side of the river, could show good faith and raise some money and save that, would you be interested in running it?'

More furniture and marquetry from silaskopf.com

We also felt like we needed a non-profit entity to accept the money because people are not going to write out big checks if they don't get a tax deduction for it. They seemed like a logical choice for basically those reasons: first, they were running a successful operation over there; Bruce knew Carol, and he contacted her and found out that they had actually looked into it themselves. But for one reason or another thought, "No we don't wanna go there because it's gonna dilute our efforts in Amherst..." so they backed off. But when Bruce made the phone call, or the email, I think that showed Carol and their board that maybe this is possible that maybe we could make this happen. We started the email campaign, and the pledges just came rolling in - I mean, it was phenomenal.

--Did you expect the donations to come in that quickly?

No. I thought it was gonna take more legwork and making phone calls and browbeating - the gratifying part was, there were some big donors, but the number of donations of $25 were really neat. They're worth as much as the $1000 dollar donations.

How many donors?

I just looked at the email list this morning. We had almost 600 people who either pledged or expressed an interest in it. They might not have given a dollar amount, but they're on the email list and in the address book. And the donations that have come into Amherst Cinema - then we sent out a second email saying 'This is really gonna happen now. Now, if you've pledged, please send your donation to Amherst Cinema.' And I think that they're up to about 400 of that 600. And the dollar amount, they're about 85%, as opposed to about 66%. So the bigger donors who pledged apparently have sent their checks, and a few of the smaller ones haven't yet done so, but we hope they will all honor their pledge.

So, there was a Gazette article that came out that said there was around $77,000, and at an Arts Council meeting [Tuesday] night, they said that figure had gone up to $91,000. And there's an additional $25,000 from [the Center for the Arts] --

Some big number, yes.

That's really remarkable that [Amherst Cinema] was able to get [those donations]. Do you think that was partly because you were members of the community as opposed to the theater itself?

I think that made a difference. We clearly we had no stake - there was no dog in the race. We just wanted to save it, and if you agree with that, here's a vehicle for you to do that. And we all want to back out as soon as the fundraising is done.

Just so I have my timeline straight: at what point did conversations with Carol Johnson and Bruce begin? Who approached who, how did that develop?

Bruce approached Carol. And we started to get pledges in, and I vaguely remember the numbers. And Bruce arranged a meeting with Carol and some of their board members. And we were able to go with them and say, 'Look, we've got $30,000 in pledges in four days--'. The pledge campaign had started before I had met Carol, so we did have a little meeting - 'How's this thing gonna play out' - but I think we felt at that point that we had $30,000 in just days; a very short amount of time.

And $50,000 was reachable, and was the number that we felt we needed to put [the Theater] on life support and then at that meeting they said, Okay, if there's gonna be an upgrade of the facility - new seats, better projection equipment - $100,000 is a more realistic figure. And now that's gone up now that they've had a chance to go in and inspect the facility. They see that there are a little greater needs.

It could ultimately easily be $150,000 to make it the facility that - and this is [Amherst Cinema Executive Director] Carol [Johnson's] term, and I like it - to give people a good movie-going experience. Meaning a comfortable seat, good sound, and a good picture. And some good popcorn, I guess.

Good popcorn helps, with the real butter, and whatnot--

So that's what we're aiming for and I think that the money coming in is realistic, that we can do that.

Before or just as you were sending out the initial email - The Email, as it is called, by me, I guess - did you have the idea that Amherst Cinema would be a good fit from the beginning?

We did have the idea that it would be a good fit, and we weren't set on it. There was a possibility that it could all fall apart and that we'd go looking for someone else as a non-profit vehicle to make it run. We weren't fixed on that. Although I would say, personally, after we had that little meaning - after The Email - and we had the meeting with Carol and some of their board members, I went away thinking: perfect. These people are professional, they will do a good job, they are not going to treat Pleasant Street as a poor stepchild. And they're going to give Northampton good movies, and it's actually going to work to everyone's benefit, that the two parts [Amherst and Northampton] will be bigger for having an alliance.

And it also sounds like that alliance - and I'm hoping to talk to Carol about this - it seems like it would be better for collaborative programming between the theatres, and rotating films, and so there's incentive - and one theatre's not going to be weighted over the other.

Exactly.

I know that your whole position in this was to raise money to keep the theater alive. Were you ever approached by any of the other interested parties, and was it ever difficult not to get involved with those negotiations?

I personally didn't. And I guess that I sort-of felt that once we zeroed in on Amherst Cinema that we were going to dilute the effort by opening the door. And maybe that was slightly dictatorial, that people were pledging money that we weren't really opening up the process to a dialogue about what the other options were. But at any rate, once the second or the third email went out and said it was Amherst Cinema, I don't remember any feedback - and I was the guy reading the emails - that said, "Oh, this is terrible." I gather there were some people out in the community who were suggesting that. But not in terms of people who pledged money who said, 'Oh no, I won't give any money to Amherst Cinema.'

I was meaning to ask about that. I know that as details of this whole situation emerge, has that happened, where someone has actually said: "No, I don't want Amherst Cinema to use my money towards this?"

Nobody. Nobody.

Is there anything else you think I should know about this, or anything else that has happened over the last few days?

We had a very gratifying meeting yesterday with the Center for the Arts board, and that was extremely generous on their part to give some of the proceeds from First Night - when they've got their own efforts, their own needs - but I think that their board felt that the Pleasant Street Theater is an important part of the fabric of the arts community, and that if they're interested in promoting the arts in general that to lose that link would be a shame. So that was gratifying and I think other people are sort of feeling that way to some degree. I think people are feeling good that there was a win here.

--Right; in that, say, a CVS wasn't rushing in to buy out the lease. Which happens enough with a lot of movie theater locations.

That was my fear. And so, this one got saved, and maybe you can work on the next one: the Academy of Music, or something happened at the Iron Horse, something like that. I'm interested in the arts community and I'm interested in seeing that happen here in Easthampton. That the arts is a way of creating an atmosphere that supports other aspects of the economy. And I see that in Northampton, and I'm starting to see that here in Easthampton. All that stuff feels good to me.

Given the success that the four of you had, could that inspire you to get involved in similar fundraising efforts in other areas?

I think you'd have to pick carefully. For instance, the Academy of Music, I'd love to see that working as a viable performance space, community theatre. But that looks like a much more daunting thing to take care of. I hope it happens in some shape or form. In terms of my personal interest, I'd keep my focus on something that looks doable. And this thing really looked doable. I think from day one I couldn't understand why somebody else didn't jump up and say, 'We'll take this thing on.' ... As I read the newspapers it looked like Bob Lawton was almost begging someone to come in and take it over - 'I'll give you the projection equipment for a buck,' or whatever it was. And I kept on waiting - where's the newspaper article that says, such and such an organization is taking this over? Then it got to, well, here's the critical point. And, Bob and Rita and I said, Let's roll up our sleeves and see what we can do.